In an apparent effort to help its users find more interesting apps in its cavernous digital stores, Apple today made an interesting tweak to its iOS and Mac app stores. Both now feature a “free app of the week” and an “editor’s choice” section. As Apple’s official App Store Twitter account announced yesterday, Cut the Rope: Experiments is Apple’s choice for this week’s free app in the iOS store. Editor’s Choice apps include Extreme Skater and Facebook Camera for iPhone, Sketchbook Ink for iPad, and Cobook and Deus Ex Human Revolution in the Mac App Store. → Read More
It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is what one of the most important app discovery mechanisms for iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to make it into the top 25? Mobile analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answer just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free apps and 3530 for paid apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2280 downloads for paid apps. → Read More
Way to blow your own horn, Google. Yesterday a newspaper in the UK, the Independent, ran a short item about how Google was about to reach an app milestone — 15 billion apps downloaded! So we reached out to Google to ask about this… and guess what? It already happened.
A Google spokesperson tells us that the milestone was passed “a few weeks ago.” → Read More
Warsaw-based, three-person startup AppCod.es just released new tools that will appeal to mobile app developers, both of which are intent on helping developers achieve better ASO, or App Store Optimization. ASO is basically a new form of SEO, but instead of boosting search engine rankings, it’s about boosting the ranking of your mobile app in iTunes, the Android Market (I mean Google Play…sigh), or another app store.
Today AppCod.es is rolling out two utilities for ASO in iTunes: one, a keyword prediction tool which aims to guess the keywords used by your app’s competition, and two, a tool that predicts your position in the app store for a given keyword. → Read More
A bit of news that squeaked out during the Win8 festivities was the launch of the Microsoft app store. In the version of the software I was using, the app has always been there but it wasn’t available until today. To be clear, the app store here is still in its absolute infancy and is, at best, a hall of demos for various app providers.
The real test of Windows 8 will be the adoption of the OS’s new design paradigms. While everyone will eventually have to fix their apps to reflect Win8′s major architecture changes, there is going to be a lot of hand-holding until the Win9 (potentially) destroys all vestigial Windows cruft. For example, Windows 8 still uses a legacy version of the registry inside Windows 8, a necessary evil required by many applications. Many apps won’t be able to update to Win8 UI standards and many more apps won’t trickle over to the Microsoft app store. It’s this disconnect that will challenge Windows 8 in the first few years of life. → Read More
The US Department of Defense Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit is look for a few good coders to help build apps and an entire app store for bomb technicians and soldiers involved in ordnance handling. This is when sliding to unlock could mean the difference between life or death.
The request for proposals is as dull as dirt (you can read it hear) but the requirements are clear: they’re looking for apps that will replace paper pocket guides and references used by the folks that blow up the big badda booms. → Read More
Yesterday, Bloomberg published a story stating that Apple had made a major (and, frankly, somewhat surprising) change to its App Store policies: it was going to begin allowing game publishers to sell bundles of games as monthly subscriptions, as opposed to a la carte. Historically all games on the App Store have been sold as one-off purchases (or for free), and they can generate further revenue by offering in-app goods and services.
But last week, game developer Big Fish Games introduced an app with a different model. Gamers would purchase the app, and, for $6.99 a month, they’d have access to “dozens” of games within that application (in other words, each game would not require a separate download). Such a model could potentially be a big deal for other gaming companies like Zynga, which could establish ‘hub’ apps rather than having to launch a new app for each game.
As it turns out, that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. → Read More
Research firm research2guidance this morning published a (free) report, offering key findings from an analysis of mobile applications store Android Market.
According to the firm, the number of active mobile apps in Android Market stood at 319,161 at the end of last month, compared to 459,589 apps that are available in Apple’s App store (the company claims there are 500,000 apps, actually).
Android developers appear to have more appetite for distributing multiple apps than iOS developers, however. → Read More
Today, third-party mobile application store GetJar is publicly launching its GetJar Gold service, which has been in beta testing for the past month. The new service presents a viable challenge to Amazon’s Appstore and its time-limited “free app of the day” by offering an entire catalog of premium Android applications for free. The apps are high quality, ad-free and are available for download at any time.
→ Read More
“Yeah, each new iOS announcement is very… bittersweet. We love it because it means new APIs for us to build on, bug fixes for things we’ve had to work around, and, ideally, more people buying the platform we build for. But then we spend months getting slammed by bad reviews, all written by people who just don’t understand: until the release goes gold, beta-specific bugs are not our fault.” — A developer who asked to not be named.
Last night, our sister site TUAW (it’s still sort of weird to write that) wrote a PSA of sorts. The message was simple: if you’re not a developer, but you’ve ignored the warning signs and finagled your way into the pre-release iOS 5 betas, you need to stop. Why? Because people are crushing developers with horribly unfair reviews, sinking their ratings because of bugs they couldn’t possibly have prepared for.
The overall message was fair enough, but their proposed solution — telling non-developers to stop downloading iOS 5 —could never work. But there is a solution (a rather simple one, in fact) that would: just don’t let people running iOS betas review things. → Read More
The more mobile apps come out, the bigger the discovery problem gets for users: Apple, for example, recently announced they have 425,000 apps in the App Store. Rankings, recommendations from platform providers or search often bring unsatisfying results – a pain that an app called AppGrooves [version 2.0, free on iTunes] now tries to solve. → Read More
Not a huge deal for the average user, but Apple has just announced volume sales support for organizations who want to pick up a few dozen copies of a certain iOS app. The new system is fairly simple: you select the app you want, select the number of seats, and pay with a credit card. It’s not clear if you can get bulk discounts yet but Apple then gives you a license for each device. → Read More
Most of you will agree when I say that one of the coolest features of Google+ is Circles, which lets you create groups of people to share specific things with, rather than sharing with everyone in your network by default. Today I came across an iOS app that basically has the same system in place, but for voicemail.
It’s called On Voicefeed and it lets you build groups (family, friends, work, girlfriend/boyfriend) and set personalized voicemail greetings for each of those groups. → Read More
Remember that whole trademark tiff between Apple and Amazon over the generic or non-generic term “app store?”
Despite going quiet for the past month, the case is certainly not over, although statements made by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton suggest that Apple may be losing steam in its fight. → Read More
At WWDC 2011, Apple announced that there are now more than 400K apps in its app store (and that more than 500K have been approved). The Android Marketplace has around 300K apps and is growing fast. The point is: There are a lot apps out there already, and more hit app stores every day. They’re going like hotcakes. But finding and discovering new apps that you actually care about? Eh, not so easy. Of course, it’s not for lack of trying. There are some awesome tools out there already trying to direct the fire hose and filter the noise.
Chomp, for example, is trying to become the Google search for apps. Zwapp, Frenzapp, and Appsfire are all bringing social to app discovery, while Heyzap is busy trying to kill game discovery. Today, Discovr adds a dy-no-mite app discovery tool to the crowd, going after the user experience problem in an awesome, though somewhat mathematical way: Interactive graphs. → Read More
Short version: Rosetta Stone launched its iPad app today, which is basically just a lighter version of its core “course” software. The app itself is nothing extraordinary, but the way it teaches languages is pretty awesome. Foreign language has never been my best subject, but I had a blast playing with this app because it feels way more like a puzzle than a language lesson. The worst part is the price: you have to be a Rosetta Stone customer to access the app. → Read More
For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple’s App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend. Today is day 3 of The Heist‘s reign, and sales are quickening.
As The Loop noted after a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what’s really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that’s for a paid app ($0.99). → Read More
There’s no doubt Android Market will at some point offer more applications for download and/or purchase than Apple’s App Store, as the latter’s growth has been slowing down of late, while the Android application store’s growth rate has been accelerating.
In a recent report, app store analytics company Distimo forecasted that Android would surpass the App Store in size before the end of July 2011.
Another research firm, Germany-based research2guidance, corroborates Distimo’s findings; the firm forecasts Android to blow past Apple’s App Store by August 2011. → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo today published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms. We got an exclusive early look at the new report.
According to Distimo, Google’s Android Market currently offers 134,342 free applications for download, while Apple’s App Store for iPhone offers 121,845 free applications. → Read More
I see you driving ’round town with an app that measures cellular radiation, and I’m like, “no interest”.
Apple head honcho Steve Jobs has made it abundantly clear that Tawkon‘s phone radiation measurement application is not welcome on its official App Store, pushing the startup to make it available for free (for jailbroken iPhones) through Cydia instead.
Tawkon sent a courteous email to Jobs in the hopes of gaining approval for distribution of the application through Apple’s App Store, only to receive a characteristically curt response back. → Read More
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